ERIC Number: EJ1269798
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2020-Nov
Pages: 38
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0305-0009
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Children's Epistemic Inferences through Modal Verbs and Prosody
Journal of Child Language, v47 n6 p1132-1169 Nov 2020
This study explores how young children infer nuances in epistemic modality through prosody. A forced-choice task was used, testing children's (ages three to seven) comprehension of the "might"/"will" distinction (modal condition) as well their ability to modulate the strength of "might" through two prosodic tunes (prosody condition). Positive and negative valence conditions were included. Younger children were shown to start off performing above chance for the modal condition, and at around chance for the prosody condition, but after age four performance on the prosody condition quickly improved. For both modal verbs and prosody, children performed significantly better when valence was positive. By age seven, children performed at ceiling for all conditions. Qualitative analysis of children's justifications for prosody responses showed metalinguistic awareness of prosodic meaning as early as age four, with the ability to relate prosody to epistemic modal meaning becoming quite common by age seven.
Descriptors: Young Children, Inferences, Suprasegmentals, Epistemology, Learning Modalities, Age Differences, Performance, Metalinguistics
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
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